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Shut Down the US Combatant Commands

Defense News recently reported on a Pentagon plan to consolidate
its six regional commands into four. The proposal would dissolve
Africa Command and split it between European and Central Commands,
and combine Southern Command and Northern Command. The action would
shed thousands of civilian and military positions and help the
Defense Department comply with the budget caps squeezing its
topline. But consolidation isn’t enough. The Pentagon should
close all of the commands.

Other Pentagon offices can accomplish the commands’ few
important functions. The commands have become less accountable
alternatives to embassies, predictable sources of threat inflation
and insatiable consumers of military resources.

The 1986 Goldwater-Nichols Act, an effort to limit the military
services’ independence, gave the regional commands control
over deployed US forces. They plan and manage relations with
foreign militaries, humanitarian assistance and war. Pacific
Command deals with most of Asia. Central Command handles the Middle
East and parts of South Asia, including Afghanistan and Pakistan.
European Command is largely an offshoot of NATO’s
headquarters. Africa, long split by Central and European Commands,
got its own command in 2008 — though it still shares European
Command’s headquarters. Northern Command was created in 2002
to manage the military’s homeland defense efforts, and
Southern Command handles South America.

There are also functional commands dealing with strategic
nuclear weapons, transportation and special operations forces,
which we would keep.

There is plenty of room to trim. The regional commands
collectively employ more than 15,000 military personnel, civilians
and contractors. They are also flag officer magnets. Pacific
Command alone has five four-star jobs, plus a full-up platoon of
three-, two- and one-star generals and admirals. Each service also
maintains subordinate commands to deal with the combatant commands
— an additional bureaucratic layer.

The proposed consolidations are especially sensible. Northern
Command is still searching for a mission. The National Guard, the
Department of Homeland Security, the intelligence community and
state authorities already compete to combat a few terrorists.
Southern Command, meanwhile, deals largely with homeland
security-related problems such as drugs and illegal immigration.
And, with odds of a major war in Europe now minuscule, that
region’s command has time to plan actions in Africa.

Still, trimming is not enough. There are several reasons to
shutter the regional commands.

First, they are redundant. When there is actual fighting to do,
we create new commands under three- or four-star officers to manage
combat in theater. Nominally, these headquarters are subordinate to
the regional commanders, but effectively they report directly to
Washington. Such was the case in Korea, Vietnam and Iraq, and still
is in Afghanistan. Whatever support the regional commands provide
in war could easily be supplied by the Joint Staff.

The Joint Staff can also incorporate the commands’
planning functions and regional expertise. There, assessments of
threats can be weighed without pressure to give each regional
commander his own menace to combat. Military attachés at
embassies or the commanders of nearby US forces can manage
relations with local militaries.

Second, the commands are essentially lobbies for US involvement
in their regions. Their commanders turn threats to regional
stability into threats to American security. Their job is to be on
watch, not to sound the all clear.

Third, the commands drive up force requirements, and thus costs.
Like children drafting Christmas lists, they request troops, ships
and future capabilities that others buy. Washington nonetheless
treats their vast appetites as outputs of military science.
Admirals and congressmen hoping to buy something can usually wave a
combatant commander’s list of unmet requirements.

Finally, the commands crowd out the civilians assigned to deal
with regional issues — ambassadors, US Agency for
International Development officials and trade representatives. The
commands offer a separate and often competing source of US
authority. Few local officials mind having their concerns addressed
by a four-star arriving with an entourage on their own transport
aircraft. The commander can arrange for a National Guard engineer
battalion to build roads or a school, a visit by a Navy hospital
ship or Air Force search-and-rescue training. And because all of
the gifts tend to come through the local military, they can harm
local civilian authority.

Closing down our commands would save far more than their
substantial budgets. It would prevent the accumulation of
cost-driving force “requirements.” It would help US
diplomats manage the cacophony of official American voices
articulating our regional policy. It would limit our tendency to
fear any region that lacks US meddling and might even encourage the
idea that the world is not entirely ours to command.